In 2010 Tim Burton's glossy, CG-heavy adaptation of Alice In Wonderland made over billion quid in ticket sales and became Burton's most successful film to date. So it can hardly be considered a flop.

But did anyone really like it? Critical responses were lukewarm and it was criticised heavily for its post-production 3D conversion. So the sequel felt like a necessary evil rather than a film to be warmly anticipated.

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Yet trading director Tim Burton for Muppets man James Bobin, introducing new characters, dialling back on Depp and straying from the source material seems to have done the franchise a whole world of good.

Alice Through The Looking Glass begins with Alice (Mia Wasikowska) captain of a real-world ship, called The Wonder, sailing the high seas for years and achieving the impossible "six times before breakfast".

But back on dry land her old suitor Hamish (Leo Bill) is holding her mother's house to ransom and things are getting a bit too real. Time for a trip through the looking glass and back to Underland where the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is in a bit of a bad way...

Charged with rescuing the Hatter's family from death by jabberwocky, Alice must travel back in time with the help of the 'Chronosphere', stolen from Time himself, Sacha Baron Cohen. Bobin's worked with Baron Cohen before on Da Ali G Show and here he's brilliant. Funny, philosophical, dressed in an amazing pointy-shouldered suit ("damn these me-shaped corridors!" he says, bumping his pads on the overly specific architecture) but more than a caricature, Baron Cohen plays him as a largely benevolent minder of the ages who's kept company only by his mechanical creatures called 'seconds'.

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Time's domain is gorgeous: crystal pocket-watches dangle from golden threads to mark the lives of the Underlanders in rooms off corridors at the centre of a giant mechanical clock. In fact, the whole of Underland has been given a magical spruce: less lurid-coloured and more intricate and intimate. It's enhanced by the 3D, which mostly gives the illusion of depth like you're looking through a window (or a looking-glass perhaps?), but really steps up when Alice sails the seas of time and throws you right into the squall.

The time-travel elements allow glimpses into characters' back stories (watch out for the super cute Cheshire kitten!) but crucially, a focus on the quest for the Hatter's family stops Depp from being quite as manically wacky (no body-popping this time) and means he's not actually in it that much.

Wasikowska as Alice is as committed and lovely as ever in costumes more spectacular than the first (Oscar noms are a given) though she's certainly no clothes horse and very much the driver of the action; Alice 2 has a positive message for girls, focusing at heart on the relationship between the sister queens (Anne Hathaway twitchy and ethereal, Helena Bonham Carter petulant and hurt) and Alice and her mother (Lindsay Duncan).

While Lewis Carroll's absurdist whimsy is still present – charming or irritating, depending on your taste – Bobin has focused in on a clear narrative rather than touring the menagerie of oddball characters as in the first film. Looking Glass might not be a masterpiece but it is at least good natured, funny and coherent. And it's managed to put some of the wonder back in wonderland.